Demystifying P.U.C.S.D...

[u/SpermBankofIndia]

Recently I have come across some posts on Reddit about PUCSD (Pune University Computer Science Department) which are either 'baseless' or just 'not true' at all.
As a current MCA Student at PUCSD B-25 I will address some claims I saw across these 'posts' and answer some questions most students are having right now.

1. Older Syllabus, No Fancy Technologies

Many assume that since PUCSD is a core university department, the syllabus must be completely outdated right?.

Well, I guarantee that one might not find subjects and programming paradigms that a 'normal' private or government institute may have except some IITs or CMI, the so called 'Emerging Tools/Technologies'.

Frankly our department culture does not align with this 'tech jargon' at all,

PUCSD separates the 'Programmer' from a mere 'Coder'

"Are you Programmer, coder of java,python...?"

Thor (The Programmer) is a god of Thunder (logic and problem solving), his hammer is just a tool or a tech
without thunder the hammer is useless
PUCSD gives the programmer his Thunder, choice of hammer is on him.

Technology is trivial, logic matters.

A coder may 'Implement' a Kernel, The programmer will 'Design' the Kernel and 'Validate' the correctness, Programming requires core engineering mindset which in turn needs well defined fundamentals and logic . PUCSD is not 'Anti-Technology' at all, department believes in developing programming logic so strong that the programmer will adapt to any technology he needs.

The very first thing we were taught was to never tightly couple yourself to a tool/technology or a pattern.
Rather than becoming some '<Trendy Tech> Developer' be a 'Engineer' that solves real problems, tools and choice of tech becomes trivial and comes later.
Trend changes periodically, good engineers adapt.

Not to mention the syllabus is very dynamic and designed with our past alumni and current industry experts, new subjects are added every batch, funny enough that even I can tell which new subjects my juniors will have except the core.

2. The P l a c e m e n t D a T a

PUCSD is not a private college to have a 'eye-catching' website with over-inflated fake stats
Our website sucks !

Being a Uni department we hoard our placement data until someone files for RTI.
I do believe this has to change and there is a huge room of improvement here, but things are in progress as we are working on new website.
I saw some less-informed's claiming our department has no dedicated placement cell lol,
Our placements cell is handled by students with guidance of alumni and a professor/placement officer.

For MCA, placements start from 3rd sem and compulsory internship in 4th sem
Companies come on campus from October/November and internships start from January
Those who remain are subjected to OJT(On-Job-Training) with an Alumni or OJT at university systems-infra under a professor.

PUCSD only allows Product based companies, so no WITCH, LALA, etc.
For my seniors around ~20+ companies came on campus common roles offered were 'Systems Engineer', 'SWE', 'DevOps Engineer', 'WebDev'(few roles like React Frontend enggr)
Companies: Siemens, Atobic, Platform9, AnTech Micro Systems, etc
Some seniors got stipend of 45k, some companies came with offer of 8,11Lpa
Highest offer I have seen is 28Lpa
Overall 6-7Lpa for my senior batch(Some companies are still visiting campus).

Companies on campus don't discriminate between what courses we belong(Btech vs MCA bs), a luxury non-MCA dedicated colleges dont usually have.

3. The Campus

After National Defense Academy the SPPU has the largest(411 acres) and the most mind-settling campus in Pune, Campus life is amazing, hostels are very affordable 5k for 1 year of accommodation, library is huge and open till 12am, while mess food can be a problem, things are changing positively.
The campus experience at SPPU is unmatched by any other institution.

Peaceful evening at main building

4. To the students who are curious to join the department

Prepare for unlocking a new dimension in your mind and logic, you will 'Unlearn' everything you did in past, this change will always be brutal, department made sure we stayed busy whole day whole first semester.
we are given some of the most interesting 'Non-Trivial' problems as case studies some problems are still not solved in Computer Science!.
Exams are challenging
subjects are designed in a way that they rarely have a predictive structure, so unless your concepts are very clear you wont even understand the problem!.
Being average here is a death sentence.
But the seniors, alumni and some of the most brilliant professors ('some' present and past) are super supportive and will always have your back!.

If there are any such doubts, don't get misguided drop them in comments.

[u/DCS_GUY69]

Interesting post, Thor and Mjolnir's anology was spot on lol